A vaccine panel hand-selected by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Friday to stop recommending universal hepatitis B vaccines for newborns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8-3 to end its long-standing recommendation that newborns receive a vaccine against hepatitis B, which causes liver disease, within 24 hours of birth. Instead, the panel will only recommend the vaccine for infants born to mothers who have tested positive for hepatitis b.
Medical experts have warned that this targeted approach could result in missed infections and sow doubt in vaccines, and they say that the hepatitis B vaccine poses little to no risk for infants.
“It could certainly create a situation where we have more infections of hepatitis B in children in our community, which ultimately cost all of us — not just the families impacted — but will cost our community in terms of both infections as well as health care costs,” Raynard Washington, the health director of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, said during a press conference earlier this week.
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The ACIP vote took place after several delays due in part to confusion from the members on what, exactly, they were voting on. The panel ultimately voted to recommend that parents who do want to get their newborns vaccinated against hepatitis B participate in “shared clinical-decision making” with their medical providers.
Over the two-day meeting, members of the panel argued that other peer nations, such as Denmark, do not recommend universal hepatitis B vaccines for infants. But Denmark has a nationalized health care system that can more easily test pregnant women for the virus, medical experts say.
Kennedy reformed the committee earlier this year after firing every member. He tapped a new panel in June. At least half of the members of the advisory committee have a history of vaccine skepticism.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, denounced the policy change in a post on X.
“As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake,” he said. “The hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective. The birth dose is a recommendation, NOT a mandate.”
Cassidy said the CDC’s acting director, James O’Neill, should refuse to sign the new recommendations and “instead retain the current, evidence-based approach.”
O’Neill, a Kennedy ally who has criticized vaccine mandates, wrote on X in October that he was directing the CDC to “identify the barriers that cause some pregnant women to miss their Hepatitis B screening and develop ways to ensure all pregnant women get screened.”
The CDC panel also voted to update the recommendations for the Vaccines for Children Program, which provides free immunizations to children whose parents would not be able to afford them otherwise, to align with the new rollbacks.
The program will now recommend infants born to a mother not infected with hepatitis B no longer receive the vaccine at birth but after two months — but the vaccine will still be available at birth under “shared clinical decision-making.”
In a sign of the haphazardness of the panel, while eight members voted to approve the VFC resolution, three abstained due to confusion over the resolution’s language.
“We don’t really know what we’re voting on,” said Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist who also voted against the updated recommendation.
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